When autumnal red and gold colours Mount Royal, McGill students in the final year of studies prepare resumés for their transition to life beyond the campus. Those in engineering, computer science and commerce carry their CVs to campus job fairs, where employers from Bombardier to Royal Bank come seeking thebest and brightest of the new crop. Most students have accepted job offers well before they've even reserved spring convocation tickets for their parents. Similarly, students in the graduate professional programs such as medicine and dentistry are assured of gainful employment and lucrative careers. They spring up on the stage to receive their degrees, and wave heartily to the future.

But what of the liberal arts students? Where are the companies beating a path up to the Arts Building to solicit budding historians? If the secrets to prosperity are written in C++ programming language, can it be that the road to the Manpower office is paved with the works of dead poets and philosophers?

The bell has been tolling for the liberal arts for some time now, since C. P. Snow sounded the alarm in his 1959 essay, The Two Cultures." The intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups," wrote Snow. Of the literary and scientific intellectuals who resided at these poles, Snow clearly felt the latter was more vital and relevant. The first knell was rung.

Recently, though, the clanging has become almost deafening. An Angus Reid poll released on June 22 claimed that 52% of Canadians believe students are better off going straight into college vocational programs to learn trade skills, giving nary a thought to the world of literature, art, philosophy and history; only 36% of respondents said they would encourage students to pursue a general university education. Thus Keats gives way to culinary arts, Apuleius to auto mechanics.

So the bell rings on. But is it a death knell? The liberal arts are neither moribund nor, claim their proponents, are they irrelevant. While they may not point the student toward a particular job, they do help develop a range of critical skills. Gregg Blachford, head of Career and Placement Services at McGill, observes that "a lot of insecurity rides in the minds of Arts students who believe the job market is poor for them."

True enough, job offers specifically asking for people with a B.A. in English (for instance) are not falling like manna from heaven into the hungry mouths of recent grads. But a B.A. is often seen as a generalist degree, and generalists are a hot commodity. Queries Blachford, "What can't you do with an Arts degree? Employers call to say, 'We want smart people with analytical and communication skills.' Arts graduates fulfill those requirements."

Blachford is not just washing a rosy rinse over a grim picture. While Angus Reid polls may say one thing, job statistics tell another story: graduates from the arts are as successful at finding work as those from vocational programs. York University's Institute for Social Research surveyed 1995 York graduates and found that two years later, more Arts grads had landed full-time employment than Fine Arts or Science grads. On a national scale, Robert Allen's report entitled "The Employability of University Graduates in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Education," published in August 1998 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), found that five years after graduation, ten per cent of those who had taken vocational diploma or certificate programs remained unemployed, compared to nine per cent in the humanities, four per cent in commerce, and five per cent in engineering.

Meanwhile, graduates from liberal arts programs also had incomes that rose faster than those from vocational programs. The figures are especially significant for women; the figures for men are closer, although the liberal arts grads saw their incomes rise more over the years. However, a double major in English and history may not have grads rolling in stock options as quickly as a degree in computer engineering. Annual income for humanities graduates averaged $34,000 five years after leaving the university; those from commerce averaged $40,000, and from engineering, $45,000 (college vocational grads averaged $29,000). Concludes Allen, an economics professor from UBC, liberal arts programs "are a good investment for Canada" that "meet the needs of the new world economy." Jobs even exist in the high-tech industries driving the information economy. Softimage, ensconced in trendy and expensive new offices on Montreal's Boulevard St-Laurent, makes 3-D imaging software that has become a staple of Hollywood's special-effects films, from Jurassic Park to The Matrix. According to company spokesperson Veronique Froment, who has a background in French and English literature, Softimage hires "quite a few arty people. We have a number of history and literature grads, especially in marketing communications and sales," she says, proving one does not need a computer science degree to crack the beau monde of computers and cappuccino machines.

Nor does one need a commerce degree to wheel and deal in high finance. When Matthew Barrett, former CEO of the Bank of Montreal, addressed the Canadian Club of Toronto recently, he set wine rippling by asserting, "It is far more important that a student graduate from university having read Dante, or the great historians of yesterday and today, than understanding the practice of double-entry accounting." Anthony Comper, the new CEO, shares his predecessor's feelings, observing in the June 23 Globe and Mail that universities should provide students with a solid general education, while the business community must accept responsibility for training graduates to meet their specific needs.

Why are the bankers going on about Dante and great historians? Dean of Arts Carman Miller floats a hypothesis: "Taking an arts education demands a greater sense of risk and adventure." Contemplating the diversity of human thought and behaviour is bound to be unsettling, he explains, and it comes with no guarantees. He goes on to note that, perhaps more pragmatically, "an arts education seems to provide the skills needed to function in a world where we are bombarded by information. The challenge today is not in finding the information, but in making sense of it."

And people working in the liberal arts are adept at meeting this challenge. When Catherine LeGrand, chair of the history department, wheels out the familiar saw "understanding the past helps us make sense of the present," she reinvigorates it with some convincing examples. For instance, a new Canadian ambassador preparing for his placement in Colombia met first with LeGrand, a specialist in Latin American history, to be primed on the historical roots of conflicts that fill today's newspapers. And in the eighties, she recalls, the financial sector hired scores of historians and political scientists as risk analysts because they could think, write, analyze and synthesize information - and also understood something about how (and why) different cultures functioned. Indeed, says Barry Levy, Dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies, "The shrinking global community means people are becoming more interested in other cultures and religions."

Communication skills are also becoming increasingly important, as Maggie Kilgour, Chair of the English Department, emphasizes. "Businesses are beginning to realize that technical expertise is easier to teach than the interpretation or communication skills that humanities students have. And the old career path, where you get a job and you're set, just doesn't exist any more." The point is well taken: there is a risk in training specifically for a job market that confounds prognosticators. Kathryn Harvey, completing a doctoral dissertation in the History Department, compares the current economy to that of the Industrial Revolution. "Things are changing so rapidly," she notes, "that if you train for a job there is no guarantee that it will still exist when you graduate." Harvey, presently working on a National Film Board "Canadian history" web site, has pondered her future as well as the past. Her conclusion? "It may seem strange after everything you read in the papers, but I'm optimistic. The economy needs people who have been trained to think as generalists."

Carman Miller agrees. "One problem with education is that it has become too specialized." To create better generalists, the faculty is offering a new multi-track undergraduate program. Instead of majoring with 56 credits in one specific area of study, the student has the option of pursuing a major of 36 credits and distributing the other credits among one or two minor fields, or perhaps even pursuing a double major. Ultimately, the student is less bound to one discipline and, in theory, more able to adapt to the shifting demands of the future.

But public perception often molds its own reality, and even if liberal arts programs prepare students for an uncertain and dynamic future, they do not always attract the sort of attention that would convince casual observers of their importance. The hefty research grants that elicit media flashbulbs and microphones rarely land in arts programs. Part of the imbalance of resources is offset by the fact that it simply costs less for the university to educate an arts student than a science or engineering student.

The Allen Report notes that university "capital and operating costs" for each humanities or commerce undergraduate degree come to $35,350, whereas those for engineering or science degrees amount to $56,560. But, says Barry Levy, "there is a general attitude that what brings in money is important, and that while science students bring in millions of dollars in research grants, arts students bring in hundreds." Further, the generally slimmer bank accounts of liberal arts graduates also create challenges. "We don't have wealthy alumni in Religious Studies," says Levy, "so fundraising is always a difficulty" - a problem common to other areas.

Those involved in the liberal arts are struggling in a critical task, to articulate the importance of their vocation. In the nineteenth century, when John Henry Newman was delineating his idea of a university and its role in society, he defined the institution's "product" fairly clearly. The university, and the liberal arts education espoused by Newman, was meant to prepare gentlemen to be the ruling professional class in England. "If É a practical end must be assigned to a University course," he wrote, "I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world." Today, the university's mission is less clear. Liberal arts programs, the basis of most universities, are prone to be derided as too remote from the primary economic and cultural concerns of the nation. Hence the Angus Reid poll results. Indeed, The Globe and Mail quotes John Wright, the Angus Reid Group's senior vice-president, as saying that universities must better market their "institutional relevance" to a public expecting utilitarian value for its tax dollars.

But not everyone is convinced. "I don't think universities are in competition with vocational and professional colleges," Miller says. "However, we have mistakenly cast ourselves as competitors for the wrong reason: money." Instead, he argues, "we have to define ourselves clearly. Too often we use commercial language - 'investing in' or 'buying' an education - which creates an inappropriate attitude. Instead, we need to use a language that describes what we do."

Miller is not alone in distancing himself from the marketplace model. Says Phil Buckley, chair of Philosophy, "I'm not happy with the commercial argument. I think the employability of an arts graduate is a benefit, but it is also secondary." Rather, he argues, "the study of philosophy, and the liberal arts in general, is an end in itself. It isn't commercial or practical, and that is one of its values." Buckley adds, "We still have to 'sell' the university to the public." But this sales job need not involve dressing the liberal arts up as something they are not. Instead, he notes, "We have to be more public, getting involved in social debate."

The public intellectual, bridging academia and the community beyond, is a familiar sight in Europe but a rare bird in North America. While McGill does contribute some public intellectuals - philosopher Charles Taylor, medical ethicist Margaret Somerville, and historian Desmond Morton, for instance - the breed is still as uncommon as a peregrine falcon on a Montreal office tower: there are some, but not many. "In Europe as a philosopher you feel important," says Buckley. There, intellectuals have well-read newspaper columns uniting issues of public and academic interest. The same could happen here, he says, noting that "a lot of discussion that occurs in the program could be broadened to include the general public."

Often, resistance to the liberal arts can create productive tension. As Maggie Kilgour explains, "I like to teach material students will approach feeling 'This is so irrelevant: these men are really dead.' And then show them that's not the case at all." The seventeenth-century poet John Milton provides a good example. "He spent his early career asking 'What should I do with myself? What is the role of art?' His father just wanted him to get a job. Of course," she laughs, "I don't expect students to model themselves on Milton, but rather to see that these texts are relevant. Paradise Lost is about a whole range of very contemporary concerns: why does evil exist, why is it so difficult to change things, why are the relations between men and women so difficult - questions that remain important. Milton uses art to sort through the human dilemma."

For McGill history student Apryl Wassaykeesic, an Ojibway from northern Ontario, her studies provide a means to examine not just the human dilemma, but also those faced by her community and by native people in general. "I'm not looking so much at the current condition of native people as understanding the roots, getting a perspective on specific examples of resistance, and learning to assess sources."

For example, she describes the recent Grey Owl film in which she worked as an extra - an experience she labels "surreal." The production team, striving for authenticity, dressed the native actors according to period photographs by Edward S. Curtis. But, explains Wassaykeesic, Curtis himself was involved in trying to reconstruct a "lost past" for his white audience, so he would bring outdated native apparel to his photo sessions. As a result of this unreliable source, the costumes in Grey Owl perpetuate an anachronism.The film gave Wassaykeesic another example of why rigorous historical research is important.

Most liberal arts students don't need much convincing that they are doing something worthwhile; after all, they are challenged by and enthusiastic about their area of study. "I've been reading since I was two years old, all the time. I love it," says literature graduate Lisa Vetch, who is planning on studying corporate law. Similarly, says Buckley, "No one drifts into philosophy aimlessly. It's too difficult. They really want to be here." It would seem that the big questions - What is life? What is justice? What is beauty? Who am I? - still need to be asked and investigated, even if they aren't finally answered. And the other questions - like How will I make money? - will take care of themselves when the time comes.

Will attitudes towards the liberal arts change? The bell continues to toll. It may be that it simply marks the passage of time, and the liberal arts will continue to evolve and interact with the world that made them. Or perhaps the bell is ringing changes. For his part, Miller is optimistic. "It may just be my background - I came from a community of 300 people in Nova Scotia, where parents would mortgage everything to ensure their kids an education," he says. "I know there's a lot of respect out there for what we do."